Dance among the Water Lilies • Lenio Kaklea, abd, Les Oiseaux (The Birds), in situ

7 pm and 8.30 pm, Water Lilies Room

November 24th, 2025

*Les oiseaux de Lenio Kaklea*
© Albert Vidal et Vertex Comunicacio

The piece makes use of birdlife to try to better understand and take a critical look at ourselves as human beings. From the first ballets to postmodern movements, dance has always had an affinity with birds. Lenio Kaklea merges into this repertoire in order to better hybridize it. Complex rhythmic patterns, flows, leaps and negotiations with space create a sense of strangeness: The group takes the birds’ point of view and forces us to decenter our all-too-human eye.

Lenio Kaklea, abd, Les Oiseaux (The Birds), in situ version

Continuing with the ecological turn her work has taken since 2022, after her immersion in the forests with Αγρίμι (Fauve), the choreographer Lenio Kaklea reflects on the way in which we can connect ourselves to other living things through the prism of dance and raise our eyes to the heavens. What would a choreographic work be like if it adopted birdlife’s point of view? That was the question she asked herself as she observed their behavior and strategies close up, without ever idealizing them. In order to be seen and heard, the spectacular courtship displays performed by some of them echo the territorial defense mechanisms practiced by others when the keen vision of the birds of prey high above them establishes control and domination. And are these dancing bodies half-human or half-bird? Like migrating species that cross all known borders, to a background of songs collected on an island inhabited by birds alone, the performers force us humans to take an interest in something other than ourselves.

Audience warning: presence of scenes of nudity

With the Autumn Festival
Choreographer and director: Lenio Kaklea
With Nefeli Asteriou, Liza Baliasnaja, Amanda Barrio Charmelo, Luisa Heilbron, Louis Nam Le Van Ho, Dimitri Mytilinaios and Jaeger Wilkinson.
Text and dramaturgy in collaboration with Lou Forster
Sound composition: Éric Yvelin
Costumes: Olivier Mulin
Scientific interlocutor: Thierry Aubin – Director of Bioacoustics at the CNRS, Paris-Saclay University.
Produced by: abd
Jointly produced by: Charleroi Danse/ Wallonia and Brussels Choreographic Center Biennale (BE), The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles (US), The Autumn Festival (FR), CCN/ Lorraine Ballet (FR), La Vignette Theater/Subsidized Theater (FR), NEXT Festival (BE), CCN/Marseille National Ballet (FR).